A Beginner’s Guide To Easy Digital Downloads

Creating and selling digital products is a popular way of making money online. And you will need a specialized system for showcasing and selling your digital products. Easy Digital Downloads is undoubtedly the most popular solution for doing that. This complete solution lets you sell any digital products including eBooks, themes, plugins, training courses, workshops etc.

Getting Started With Easy Digital Downloads

Today, we will show you how to use Easy Digital Downloads(EDD) for selling digital products on your website. First of all, download, install and activate the plugin. At this point, you will be greeted with a welcome screen. You will also notice a new menu item titled ‘Downloads’ in your website dashboard.

Adding New Product

To add a new product, go to Downloads -> Add New.

Provide the title and description of the downloadable item.

In the ‘Download Prices’ section, specify the price of the product. If it is a free product, then leave the price at zero.

Then, in ‘Download Files’, you have to specify the file. If you have the item saved in other location, then provide the file name and file URL in their respective fields.

Alternatively, you can upload the file from your computer by clicking the ‘Upload a File’ link. Additional files could be added by clicking the ‘Add New File’ button. If you want to remove any file, click the ‘x’ link right after the file URL field of that file.

The next two sections let you add notes and an excerpt for your product. The notes will be sent to the customer with the purchase receipt and the excerpt could be used in your theme.

On the right side, you have some other options. First of all, the ‘Download Stats’ section shows you the total earning of the product along with the number of sales. The ‘Download Categories’ and ‘Download Tags’ sections work like regular WordPress categories and tags. The ‘Download Settings’ section allows you to limit the number of download per product. For instance, if you put 5 in the ‘File Download Limit’ field for a product, then a buyer will be able to download that item 5 times only. If you want to use your purchase button, check the ‘Disable the automatic output of the purchase button’ box.

When you have everything configured for the file, click the ‘Publish’ button. However, you won’t be able to see the product before specifying a payment method, which we will do shortly.

Setting up EDD

Now that we know how to add a product, let’s see how to set up various options of the plugin. Go to the Downloads -> Settings page.

First of all, let’s focus on the ‘General’ tab. ‘Test Mode’ lets you test your website without making any real-life transactions. The next few options will let you define the pages for Checkout, Success, Failed Transaction and Purchase History. Then, select the base country and state / province of your online store.

The ‘Currency Settings’ section includes options to define the store currency, currency position, thousands and decimal separators. ‘API Settings’ and ‘Tracking Settings’ are advanced level options, we will skip them to keep this tutorial simple. The last option will let you remove all your data when you uninstall the plugin. After making the necessary changes, click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

Payment Gateways

In this tab, you can select your payment gateway from the available options – PayPal Standard and Test Payment. While the first one should be used when you make your online store publicly available, the later could be used to test things before going live.

The ‘Accepted Payment Method Icons’ field lets you choose which icons you want to display on the checkout page. Then, in the ‘PayPal Settings’, you have to provide the PayPal email address and other details.

Emails

This tab lets you customize the email template and the sale notifications emails. You can upload a custom logo from the ‘Logo’ field. The next few options let you define the sender name, email, subject and receipt of the email. You will find the available template tags right in the receipt field.

Then, the ‘Sale Notifications Subject’ will let you define the subject of the notification email. In the ‘Sale Notification’, you can customize the body text for the notification email. If you want to send the notification emails to multiple email addresses, provide them in the ‘Sale Notification Emails’ field. Lastly, you can disable the notification emails by checking the ‘Check this box if you do not want to receive emails when new sales are made’ box.

Styles

If you want to use your set of styles instead of the default styling, check the – ‘Check this to disable all included styling of buttons, check out fields, and all other elements’ box.

You can also define the default button style and button color from the ‘Buttons’ section.

Taxes

In order to enable taxes for the products, check the ‘Check this to enable taxes on purchases’ box. It is possible to define tax for specific regions by selecting the country and state / province in the ‘Tax Rates’ field.

If you want to apply a flat rate for all your customers except the specific regions, provide the rate in the ‘Fallback Tax Rate’ field. The following options let you choose whether to include the tax in the product price, display tax rate on prices and how you want to show the price on the checkout page.

Payment Details

The ‘Payment History’ sub-menu lists all the purchases of your products. While the default view lists all the purchases, you can view them according to their status. The available statuses are – Completed, Pending, Refunded, Revoked, Failed and Abandoned. You can filter the purchases by providing the start date and end date and then clicking ‘Apply’.

Each download entry includes the download ID, buyer’s email address, amount, date, username, status and a link to view the order details. Hovering over the email address reveals two more options – resend the purchase receipt or delete the entry.

Providing Discount

If you want to provide a special discount, head to Downloads -> Discount Codes and click ‘Add New’. In the following page, provide the name of the discount. Then, provide the coupon code for the discount. You can provide two types of discounts – percentage and flat amount. Select your desired type and provide the discount amount. In the ‘Download Requirements’ field, select the product(s) that will enjoy the discount. If you want to exclude any product from the discount, specify it in the ‘Excluded Downloads’ field. Then, provide the start and end date for the promotion.

If you want, your customer to purchase a specific amount for enjoying this discount, specify that amount in ‘Minimum Amount’ field. And if you want to restrict the discount to be used for a particular number of times only, specify that in the ‘Max Uses’ field.

Lastly, if you want a customer to enjoy the discount only once, select the ‘Limit this discount to a single-use per customer?’ box.

Once you have everything in place, click the ‘Add Discount Code’. Now you will be taken back to the ‘Discount Codes’ sub-menu. In this page, you will find out all of your saved discount codes. Each promotion includes the code, amount of discount, number of uses, max use range, start and expiry date and the status.

If you want to deactivate any discount, hover over the discount name and click ‘Deactivate’. Similarly, you can also ‘Activate’ any deactivated discount.

The Report Section

The ‘Reports’ sub-menu will provide you with a complete overview of your products. You can choose to view the report of your earnings, downloads, customers, payment methods, and taxes. While the default view show your earning for the current month, it is also possible to see the report of today, yesterday, this week, previous week, this month, last month, this year, last year. If you want to view the earnings report of a specific period, choose ‘Custom’, provide the start and end date and click ‘Filter’.

To export the reports, go to the ‘Export’ tab on the top. ‘Export PDF of Sales and Earnings’ section lets you download a PDF report of your sales and earnings reports for the current year. Below, you will find options to export your earning and sales, payment history, customers list and download history as CSV file.

Other Options

‘Categories’ and ‘Tags’ sub-menus list all the categories and tags used in your products. It is possible to edit the name and slug of them. You can also delete or view the categories and tags.

The ‘Tools’ sub-menu includes some useful options. In the ‘General’ tab, you can ban users by specifying their email addresses in the ‘Banned Emails’ field. ‘System Info’ provides detailed information on your website, hosting provider, browser, WordPress configuration and EDD details. The ‘Import / Export’ lets you export EDD settings from your site or import EDD settings from other sites.

The ‘Add-Ons’ sub-menu lists the available add-ons for the plugin. These premium add-ons let you add additional facilities to EDD.

Conclusion

We would finish this tutorial here. We know we have skipped some features and kept the discussion short in some cases. As the title suggests, this tutorial is supposed to be a beginner’s guide to Easy Digital Downloads. For this reason, we tried to keep the thing as simple as possible. However, if you have any question or want to know more about a particular feature of EDD, please leave a comment below. We would be glad to help you. And don’t forget to share your experience with us.